There's No Money In Poetry, But Then

If I Were A Young Man With My Bones Full Of Marrow, Oh, If I Were A Bold Young Man Straight As An Arrow, I'd Store Up No Virtue For Heaven's Distant Plain, I'd Live At Ease As I Did Please And Sin Once Again.

Poetry Began In The Matriarchal Age, And Derives Its Magic From The Moon, Not From The Sun. No Poet Can Hope To Understand The Nature Of Poetry Unless He Has Had A Vision Of The Naked King Crucified To The Lopped Oak, And Watched The Dancers, Red-eyed From The Acrid Smoke Of The Sacrificial Fires, Stamping Out The Measure Of The Dance, Their Bodies Bent Uncouthly Forward, With A Monotonous Chant Of "kill! Kill! Kill!" And "blood! Blood! Blood!

I Do Not Love The Sabbath, The Soapsuds And The Starch, The Troops Of Solemn People Who To Salvation March. I Take My Book, I Take My Stick On The Sabbath Day, In Woody Nooks And Valleys I Hide Myself Away. To Ponder There In Quiet God's Universal Plan, Resolved That Church And Sabbath Were Never Made For Man.

We Forget Cruelty And Past Betrayal, Heedless Of Where The Next Bright Bolt May Fall.

Philosophy Is Antipoetic. Philosophize About Mankind And You Brush Aside Individual Uniqueness, Which A Poet Cannot Do Without Self-damage. Unless, For A Start, He Has A Strong Personal Rhythm To Vary His Metrics, He Is Nothing. Poets Mistrust Philosophy. They Know That Once The Heads Are Counted, Each Owner Of A Head Loses His Personal Identify And Becomes A Number In Some Government Scheme: If Not As A Slave Or Serf, At Least As A Party To The Device Of Majority Voting, Which Smothers Personal Views.